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A Breakdown of the Recent Server Trouble |
December 16, 2005, 3:34AM |
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by: eon topic: Site News bookmark this article view bookmarked articles go to archives |
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| We've had some rough patches with the server on DS over the past week or so and I wanted a chance to address the various issues being reported. Taking time to read this will give you a bit of insight into what's going on and also help you to know what events should and shouldn't be reported to me.
--- "Cannot connect to MC" error: This error will potentially come up for a few seconds and only once every 6 hours. This happens as a certain server process is automatically reset. If you get it, please wait for approximately 10 seconds and then try again. You should then have no trouble. This is normal, there is no need to report it. Server Slowdown: Depending upon the time of day, this may be normal. Between 4-5am and 6-7am CST, automatic maintenance processes run which significantly slow the server down. This is normal, there is no need to report this. Other times, slow downs are due to a server reboot. If during regular hours of operation, you notice that the site suddenly goes offline for a few solid minutes (giving you timeouts and 404 errors) and then comes back online but runs very slowly, this is normal behavior for a reboot. On reboot, the web server and other software goes through a "warm up" period where caches are being loaded up, extra processes are being launched, etc. This can take up to 30 minutes but usually shouldn't take any more than 10 or 15. You'll eventually notice when everything "clicks" into place and suddenly the site becomes very fast and responsive again. During a reboot, if you're in the DS chat room, you will be disconnected. If you suspect a reboot, there is no reason to report it. Recent Intermittent 404 Errors: I received reports from some people who were getting random 404 errors while surfing the site. Often they would experience sudden 404s for anywhere from 5 - 30 seconds and then suddenly everything would be fine again. This behavior would repeat unpredictably and was characterized by the fact that it didn't affect DS chat (during the 404s if you happened to be in the chat room, you wouldn't have been disconnected, unlike with a server reboot). I believe I successfully addressed the cause of these errors as of yesterday (12/15). These errors should now either stop completely or at least be greatly reduced in their frequency and duration. If you continue to see intermittent 404 errors as described above please update this thread with the date and time of the outage, approximately how many people were online at the time it began and for how long the 404s lasted. If by reading the descriptions above, you feel the 404s are the result of a server reboot or regular maintenance, do not bother to report. Much of this is happening because of DarkStarling's continued growth and things having to be changed on the server to help handle the increased demand. Thanks to everyone for your patience as I work on these things and thanks also for your valuable feedback. Hopefully things are running more smoothly now and will continue to improve even more in time. --- Note, this was also posted in the forums in the Town Hall section. For the sake of organization, if you have any technical reports to make, post them on that thread: http://www.darkstarlings.com/bbs/topic.php?id=9990 If you have other general comments feel free to leave them on this article. --- |
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